


Firelight

by Laylah



Category: Infinite Undiscovery
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Halloween, Post-Canon, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It gets less all right as the hunter's moon wanes and winter comes on. Out on the plains, harpies circle in flocks instead of alone, and in the woods the wolves bay at all hours, high and eerie. The castle feels too big for the number of people in it, drafty and echoing.</p><p>[ending spoilers?]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firelight

Autumn's usually a real nice time of year in Burguss. It's cooling down but not too cold yet, the trees all change color, and there's a festival for the apple harvest. That's what Ed says, anyway, and he should know. Vic was kind of looking forward to it -- it's almost always just cold in Kolton, and Cobasna's pretty all year but doesn't change colors.

This year might be sort of different, though. There's frost early on, and people are talking about how that might wreck the harvest if they're not lucky. And nobody's much in a festival mood with what's happened to all of their lunaglyphs. The Force is trying to help out as best they can, but there's not a lot of them and they have a lot of ground to cover.

"Ed, I think you lied to me about this changing-seasons thing," Vic says one chilly evening, poking at the fire in the hearth and watching it spit little stubborn puffs of smoke.

"Is that what you think?" Ed says. He comes over to crouch by the fire himself and takes the poker. Even doing it the hard way, he's pretty good at getting the coals to really burn. "You sorry you didn't go to Fayel? I could still banish you there."

"Yeah, as if I'd go." That might have been sort of Vic's plan for a while, but then Dominica had to go and say that stuff about girls being _different_, and it just felt too weird. "Anyway, it's good for you to have a little brother."

Ed snorts. "You're just saying that because Eugene did," he says. He's kind of smiling, though, about as close as he usually gets. "Pass me some more of the firewood. I think there's still enough heat left for it to catch."

Vic takes a log off the stack and passes it to him, and they both sit there with their hands stretched out to the fire as it crawls up over the split wood. Maybe it's not quite like Ed made it sound at first, but Burguss is all right.

Only it gets less all right as the hunter's moon wanes and winter comes on. Out on the plains, harpies circle in flocks instead of alone, and in the woods the wolves bay at all hours, high and eerie. The castle feels too big for the number of people in it, drafty and echoing. Vic starts at shadows and Ed snaps at people more than usual, and Kiriya tells them both they're being ridiculous, only he looks over his shoulder all the time, too.

Then it's the night of the new moon, late, and Vic is heading down the empty west hallway to bed when the lamps go out -- all of them, one after the other, like some giant hand just reached down to snuff the wicks.

"Hello?" Vic says nervously, and immediately thinks it was a dumb idea -- when you fight in the dark, Komachi explained once, you should fight silently, so you don't give your enemies any advantages.

There's no answer.

Vic reaches out one hand to touch the wall. It shouldn't be so hard to find the third doorway by touch, right? Just keep going, one foot in front of the other. A nightwhisper, even a maybe-only-sort-of nightwhisper-in-training, shouldn't be scared of the dark anyway.

Five steps, six, seven, this is weird but that's all, and then Vic stumbles over something stretched across the floor. Something soft, but without a lot of give to it, like -- like a body, not a man in heavy armor like the castle guard, too soft for that, and Vic probably shouldn't have tripped on enough bodies to be able to tell the difference. "Hello?" There's a tiny bit of starlight from the window at the end of the hall, but nowhere near enough to see anything here in the middle of it. The floor is icy cold where Vic landed on it. "Are you all right?"

There's a wet cough that Vic's never been able to forget, a sound that belongs in nightmares, and a soft voice says, "Help me, Vicky."

"What?" Vic says, can't help it, scrambling backward. It can't be -- it's not _possible_, he's been dead for years --

"Why won't you help me?" the voice asks, thin and ragged like it's coming from a throat worn out from coughing. "Your brother needs you, Vicky. Nobody cares about me but you."

"This isn't real," Vic protests, voice all panic-shaky and high. "You can't be here. You're a bad dream, is all. You're --"

"It hurts," the ghost whispers, and there are two red glowing spots in the dark now, evenly spaced, moving toward Vic slowly. "It hurts so bad, Vicky, and you knew it, and you didn't help me." Vic can't look away from those glowing spots, glowing _eyes_, close enough now that their light shows off the rest of the face, and it's familiar too, but twisted -- like he was sick for months, not weeks, long enough to melt the flesh off his bones, leave him made of skull and shadows. "Come home with me, Vicky," the ghost says, and a cold bone claw wraps tight around Vic's ankle.

Vic screams.

The door on the other side of the hall slams open before Vic's even run out of breath, and it's Ed, half out of his clothes but holding his sword. Firelight spills out of the doorway around him, and for a second the ghost is lit up by it solid and awfully _real_. "Vicky," it pleads, and its face is creepy and desperate and it can't be an actual person -- and then it can't take the light, or something, and it dissolves into coal-black wisps of bitter smoke.

"Vic," Ed says, "are you okay?"

"I think so," Vic says. The hallway's empty now except for the two of them, and the lamps are starting to flicker back on at the ends. "It's gone, right?"

"Yeah," Ed says. "It's gone." He shifts his grip so he's holding that big sword one-handed, and reaches down to help Vic up. "Dragon's blood, your hands are freezing." His voice is steady but he almost never swears -- he's usually real respectful about the Claridians -- so he must be upset, too. Somehow that kind of makes Vic feel better. "Why don't you come in here and warm up for a bit?"

"Thanks," Vic says.

It's a lot warmer in Ed's room than it was in the hall, the difference between Fayel and Kolton, practically. Vic scoots inside and claims a spot on the big couch -- Ed must have dragged it over close to the fire when the weather got cold, because it's in a real good spot now.

"That's better, right?" Ed says. He puts his sword away, and comes over to sit on the couch, too. Vic waits for him to ask about the ghost, or try to say something about it, but he doesn't, just sits there being warm and alive and real, and that's okay too. Eventually the battle shakes wear off, and Vic starts to think it might be time to go to bed for real instead of being a bother. Only Ed says, "You can stay, if you want. We'll look around after the sun comes up, and see if we can figure out what happened out there."

"Okay," Vic says. "Sounds good." Staying up might not be such a bad idea -- seeing something like that just leads to nightmares anyway, right? And from here they can keep watch for first light through the windows.

Only it's warm in here and the firelight's comforting, and when Vic slumps against Ed's side he just pulls a blanket over them both, and Vic's eyes close. The sun'll rise whether or not they stay up watching.


End file.
